Bing: Detroiters to see more police on patrol

1:41 PM, January 23, 2013

Interim Police Chief Chester Logan, with Mayor Dave Bing and other members of Detroit Police Department, talks about crime statistics as a restructuring plan is announced Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building in Detroit. The plan eliminates the tactical mobile unit and the gang squad in an effort to put more officers on the street. / JESSICA J. TREVINO/Detroit Free Press

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Mayor Dave Bing and DPD plan: Mayor Dave Bing announced the restructuring plan to enhance the Detroit Police force by eliminating the tactical mobile unit and Gang squad at a press conference on Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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Mayor Dave Bing and top police brass said this morning that they expect to redeploy 100 more police officers to street patrols in the coming months as part of a major reorganization of the shrunken Detroit Police Department.

Bing and Interim Police Chief Chester Logan confirmed that the department is disbanding its gang squad and tactical mobile division in a move to get more officers off desk duties and out of specialized missions. The plan aims to put more cops on patrol. The move comes as Detroit recorded the highest rate of homicides last year in nearly two decades.

“We have to make sure all of our resources are being properly utilized,” Logan said at a news conference this morning at Bing’s office. “We want to make sure everyone who can be put on patrol is on patrol.”

Logan and other top police officials said the disbanding of the gang squad won’t diminish the city’s fight against gang violence, but rather will spread gang-fighting duties around to precincts. That comes despite rising complaints that groups of juveniles are targeting people to rob and assault, but police don’t considered these groups to be gangs in the typical sense.

The department also announced that it has initiated a new round of possible promotions for officers to become sergeants, something the city hasn’t done in two years. Logan said it will send a message to the rank and file that the department is still alive and willing to promote and groom future leaders even as Detroit’s daunting budget crisis results in a smaller police force.

The goal of the reorganization is to boost the level of officers either on active patrol or in investigative roles to 87%, with no more than 5% working in administrative functions. Critics have said the police department has too many expensive sworn officers in roles that could be performed by less-costly civilian employees.

The reorganization comes as police unions and the city are in arbitration over 12-hour work shifts the city imposed last year, saying it would make the department’s scheduling more flexible as it tried to cover more hours of the day with a police department whose ranks are dwindling.

The mayor and Logan released new statistics this morning about the city’s 386 criminal homicides last year that, combined with 25 homicides the city deemed justifiable, pushed Detroit to a per-capita homicide rate not seen since 1993.

To that end, Logan said the department plans to beef up its homicide section with more investigators, but a timetable for that move wasn’t immediately known.

The department said that about half of all Detroit’s homicide victims know their assailant, and 37%-50% of the killings over the last three years involved disputes or arguments, underscoring a need to initiate conflict-resolution efforts citywide, particularly in troubled neighborhoods.

Logan said the number of homicides in Detroit’s neighborhoods “is a direct result of the lack of nonviolent conflict resolution and neighborhood disputes that become increasingly difficult to police.”

Bing sought to reassure visitors, in particular, that Detroit is not an unsafe city to outsiders and chastised the news media for portraying Detroit as a dangerous place for visitors.

It still remained unclear whether Bing and other city leaders will move anytime soon to appoint a new police chief. Bing said it’s up to the city’s Board of Police Commissioners to vet candidates, but he said it will be difficult to find a new chief willing to step in not knowing whether Bing or someone else will be the city’s mayor in 2014. Added to that, Bing again would not say whether he will run again this year for a second full term.